Schrödinger's Freeze

The On-Purpose Chaos Of The OMB Budget War

I keep hearing that Trump’s attempted budget freeze is off. They tell me Trump reached too far, too fast, and got his hand smacked, that the chaos of this past week was a disaster for him and a sign that yes, he can still be thwarted.

Except, that’s not what happened. The budget freeze is and is not dead, blocked and not blocked by the courts. Schrödinger's Freeze is still wreaking havoc and is likely to wreak more in the coming days. Also, its creation provides a window into the tactics we can expect in a second Trump term. They are more subtle, less ego-driven, and far more authoritarian than the first go-round.

We should probably open the box.

What Happened?

On January 27th, Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reported that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a two-page memo earlier that day ordering all agencies to immediately freeze expenditures towards any program “that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

This memo looks like policy — it’s written on White House stationary, it has the structure of an official document — but is actually memeworld vomit that means everything and nothing. “Green New Deal” is a campaign slogan turned catchall for any government activity that pertains to the environment, completely subjective and highly elastic. “Gender Ideology” could include any program with a form that asks about pronouns or uses “they” to refer to an individual. “DEI” and “Woke” are twisted conservative buzzwords that mean “things we hate that we think pertain to race, gender, or sexual orientation,” which apparently is everything. Last night, Trump signed a memorandum that explicitly blames DEI policy for Wednesday’s horrific plane crash. No evidence for that whatsoever, by the way. Just vibes.

Even a hypothetical government program impossible to shoehorn into one of these incredibly broad categories may not be exempt; after all, the memo pertains to expenditures on programs “including, but not limited to” these buzzwords.

The memo does not explicitly say what will happen to the federal worker who fails to freeze a program the administration does not like, because it doesn’t need to. This administration has made it perfectly clear that it would like to fire most of the civil service and is already mounting a pressure campaign to collect as many resignations as they can before the actual purge begins. Worse yet, there’s no surefire way to stay on the right side of this order. If an agency shuts down the wrong program, it’s deep state sabotage intended to make Trump look bad and punish Republican voters. If they keep the wrong program, this is also deep state sabotage intended to weaken America from within.

This impossible bind, and the fear that comes with it, is absolutely on purpose. As OMB director Russell Vought explained in a speech to donors behind closed doors:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected…when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

The memo set a deadline for January 28th at 5:00 PM, which gave federal workers approximately 30 hours to make their choice. The effects were immediate. Medicaid portals shut down in all 50 states. All National Institute of Health (NIH) grant reviews stopped.

As news of the memo spread, justified panic set in. Would the freeze also apply to financial aid for college students? SNAP benefits? Defenders rushed to point out that the memo explicitly “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals,” but what the hell does that mean? Does the Federal Government have to directly disburse funds without any intermediary organization or agency? What about funds provided to the states for direct assistance?

Nonprofits scrambled to file a lawsuit, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze at 3:12 PM on the 28th, less than 2 hours before the deadline. If the rule of law still holds any sway at all, this freeze will be struck down entirely because it is blatantly unconstitutional. Congress has the power of the purse. They decide what money get spent and where, it is their main check on the executive branch. If Trump gets away with this freeze, our legislature becomes a vestigal organ and the executive branch absorbs their power.

Everyone geared up for a showdown. But then, on January 29th, the White House appeared to back down. They issued a two-sentence memo that reads, in its entirety:

OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. if you have questions about implementing the President’s Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel.

People with a basic understanding of written English and the meaning of words logically assumed this meant Trump had rescinded the freeze, and they reacted accordingly. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer declared victory and demanded that Vought resign in disgrace. AP News, NBC, CNN, The Hill, and many other outlets pushed headlines stating the freeze is off.

Buried in these articles, however: a very different message from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, which she posted on Twitter shortly after the memo dropped:

In other words: the unconstitutional order remains in place, but the memo specifically challenged in court by that emergency injunction doesn’t exist anymore, a move explicitly intended to thwart the court-ordered delay. Turns out judges aren’t stupid and the block will still likely stand, though the wording and the argument just got a lot more complicated and it’s unclear whether the block is technically active right now. Hopefully watchdog lawyers weren’t planning on sleeping ever again.

Trump’s first term made it clear that Twitter statements carry much more weight than anything printed on White House stationary, but lest you doubt, the White House has generously released a fact sheet that clarifies the order that no longer exists. It explicitly exempts Medicaid, college financial aid, food stamps, and other direct assistance programs, which is good news for the millions of Americans who depend on them for food and education and medical care. But the fact sheet also reiterates that the freeze applies to “programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President’s Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest.” Exempt programs aren’t off the hook either. “If agencies are concerned that these programs may implicate the President’s Executive Orders, they should consult OMB to begin to unwind these objectionable policies without a pause in the payments.”

This guidance contains the same buzzwords and/or refers to executive orders that contain the buzzwords, which means this not-freeze still encompasses everything and nothing. It remains arbitrary and subject to interpretation, able to fit the changing needs and whims of the administration.

So no, the budget freeze is not off. It both is and is not blocked by the courts, does and does not require action. NIH grant reviews remain paused for now. Federal workers have no set deadline, which means they now have an unknowable amount of time to make an impossible decision.

What Does It Mean?

Trump is notoriously ego-driven. He hates to lose and hates to look weak. These traits defined his first presidency but, if this budget freeze is any implication, it will not entirely define the second. His administration’s apparent surrender appears weak and incompetent to most people left of center, which frees the administration to do their budget vivisections in peace.

The administration both did and did not walk back budget freezes on Medicaid, food stamps, and Pell grants. They now claim the freeze was never intended to target these programs (and that the Medicaid “outage” was coincidental), because a memo that means nothing can mean anything you like.

Politicians, pundits, mainstream and independent media (myself very much included) fired off posts and articles about the impending catastrophe…and then it didn’t happen. Now, conservatives are accusing us of deliberate fearmongering, crying wolf to undermine the President. This is why you can't trust the hysterical fake news media. Next thing you know they’ll be claiming the freeze is still happening, that the increasing governmental dysfunction is Trump’s fault and not the natural result of green DEI gender wokeness. Why haven’t these bureaucrats shut these programs down like we ordered them to?! Fire them all. Replace them with loyalists. Destroy the enemy within.

Is the freeze off or not? What programs does it apply to? The answer is: whatever Trump and his supporters want and need it to be. I can point to authentic quotes from the administration to definitively prove any of these things.

Trump loves to contradict himself like this. Here are two quotes from his press conference on the DC plane crash, uttered mere minutes apart:

In moments like this, the differences between Americans fade to nothing compared to the bonds of affection and loyalty that unite us all, both as Americans and even as nations. We are one family, and today we are all heartbroken. We’re all searching for answers

And

We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary…And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen, because this was the lowest level.

So which is it? Did Trump call for unity, or did he blame the Biden administration for the crash? The answer is: whichever you need it to be at any given time. Accusing the Democrats of divisive politics? Trump called for unity. Ranting about The Enemy Within? Definitely Biden’s fault. It’s neither, and it’s both.

It’s Schrödingers all the way down. Only two things are certain in Trump’s worldview: We are right and our enemies are wrong. Reality will bend as much as it needs to in order to prove that axiom true. It’s an annoying rhetorical strategy, but it’s more than that. It’s how democracies come undone.

Rule of law is the defining feature of a representative democracy; no one is above it, not even our leaders. Our government is limited by the Constitution, legal precedent, and by laws already in place. We can alter that framework, but there are rules for that too. In an autocracy, on the other hand, the leader is the law. The law is whatever he says it is.

There are two ways you can change a representative democracy into an autocracy. You can set the Constitution on fire, toss out all laws, and crown yourself king: the shortest distance between two points. It does, however, tend to be very unpopular in countries that pride themselves on freedom and equality under the law. Best case scenario, you’re going to have to terrorize and jail a huge portion of the population, it’s going to be exhausting and take up lots of resources. Worst case scenario, you get overthrown or the military turns on you.

The other, more common way to transform a republic into an autocracy takes longer but works better: maintain the rule of law, but make those laws so vague and ill-defined that they depend entirely on interpretation. There is now legal justification for anything the authoritarian wants to do, and they can do it all in the name of upholding democracy.

For example: since there is no way for federal agents to know what programs they should freeze, they have no way to conform to the letter of the law. There is no way for them to be safe from punishment. Ultimately, Trump or one of his lackeys will decide. They will, essentially, fire at will.

I am keeping my eye on a few other things, like the expanding definition of “terrorist,” which I’ll discuss in a different article. This word was already arbitrary, already up to the discretion of the president and the three-letter agencies, but now that cartels are terrorists, and cartels ostensibly control “nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border,” it stands to reason that anyone who crossed illegally is either a terrorist or cooperated with terrorists to get here. Did I mention we’re expanding Guantanamo Bay to house undocumented people pending repatriation (or, you know, indefinite detention, as determined by the needs of the administration)? Did I mention Marjorie Taylor Greene has revived the “classify Antifa as domestic terrorists” bill?

It hasn’t happened yet. Very little has actually happened yet, despite this flurry of activity. They are laying the foundations for what comes next, and while we cannot know exactly what that structure will look like, we’ve seen the basic blueprint. Two-thirds of Trump’s record-breaking 42 executive orders mirror policies outlined in Project 2025, and at least two of them were literally written by people who worked on that plan. Project 2025’s architects occupy important positions within the administration — including OMB director Russell Vought, who co-authored the 920-page document. Vought alluded to a “Part 2” of Project 2025 in an undercover video released last August, already written and intended for the President’s transition team post-election.

It’s good to push back against the foundation-building process: to challenge unconstitutional laws in court, to shine a spotlight on the dismantling of our civil service and violations of due process and destruction of trans rights without getting distracted by one of Trump’s Scandals of the Week. On an individual level, a good thing we can do is strengthen the bonds we already have. Invite friends for a weekly dinner, board game night, hockey-watching party: whatever you’re into. People you already know, people your friends can vouch for. You’d hardly believe how bad I am at this sort of thing, but I’m lucky to have friends who are incredibly good at it. Start a group chat. On Signal, maybe. You really can’t know too many people, or make too many friends, at a time like this.